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Request for Startups: Water

229 points by craigcannon 10y ago

cjbenedikt 10y ago
Finally! Congrats!
toomuchtodo 10y ago
Maybe reach out to these folks? https://openawg.github.io/ https://openawg.github.io/
- gault8121 10y ago
  This is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
saycheese 10y ago
>> "We’re now reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so you can apply here now." What percentage of YC investments are funded on a rolling basis?
- 8a 10y ago
  What changed? On what basis where applications reviewed before? What do you mean here by rolling basis?
chermanowicz 10y ago
I'm excited about this quite a bit, but does YC have any experts on water & science/engineering in general? "lower-cost desalination plants, novel purification technologies" are technical science & engineering problems often closely tied to academia & research. Fortunately though there are some great resources in the Bay Area in these fields.
sciurus 10y ago
If you want a picture of what life could be like if we don't get ahead of the problem, read The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. http://windupstories.com/books/water-knife/ http://windupstories.com/books/water-knife/
- pcmaffey 10y ago
  In similar vein, an interesting indie sci-fi movie from Mexico dealing with the topic: Sleep Dealer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/
sethbannon 10y ago
Love seeing YC increasingly focus on helping solve the world's biggest problems.
Animats 10y ago
Whatever happened to Kamen's "Slingshot" water purifier? [1] It was a little vapor compression distillation unit powered by a Stirling cycle engine. There was a tabletop-sized model, and a shipping-container sized model. There were announcements of field tests. Heavy PR around 2012, then silence. There were a few demo installations, but it never appeared as a volume product. There's a similar technology from Simon Frasier University.[2] They're looking for someone to commercialize it. A YC startup might start by deploying that technology in East Porterville, CA, where the wells have gone dry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_(water_vapor_distillation_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_(water_vapor_distill... [2] https://www.biv.com/article/2016/5/water-machines-creator-thirsty-market/ https://www.biv.com/article/2016/5/water-machines-creator-th...
- EnFinlay 10y ago
  *Simon Fraser University Edit: I am also very curious about what happened to that bad-ass machine from Kamen.
  - tim333 10y ago
    No special info but the machine looked awful expensive for the amount of water it would make.
    - burgreblast 10y ago
      The Israeli desalination plant "Sorek can produce a thousand liters (264 gal) of drinking water for 58 cents." And it can produce 624Km3/day or 150M m3 of water a year. That's 20% of Israeli domestic consumption. That's $0.002 per gallon, about what CA water costs. All fresh from the sea. 75X cheaper than the 0.15 cents per gallon @mojomark estimates in the thread below that it would cost in fuel costs alone for a tanker to ship water from alaska. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the... I can't tell exactly, but the $0.58/1000 liters seems to be amortizing the $400M investment cost, because it's on a 25 year Build - Operate - Transfer contract.
- 10y ago
jly 10y ago
I don't share a strong sense of optimism that we'll 'beat climate change'. We need to fundamentally change how humans live on this planet and interact with our ecosystems to move past issues like this. Projects like these will certainly help a lot of people in the near-term, but I fear they distract us from addressing the real problems. Sadly, the real problems don't have much of a financial incentive to be solved.
- thesagan 10y ago
  I'm with you on that one. The current patterns of human consumption are too slow to change in the face of the type of climate change we are looking at. Even simple things like the obscene volume of packaging used for marketing and antitheft measures speak against real reform occurring soon.
  - wbillingsley 10y ago
    I can't help but be reminded of the factoid that in 1898 international planning conferences were flummoxed on how on earth to deal with the ever-increasing problem of the amount of horse manure in cities... by 1912, not so much. Now solar is cheap, coal seems incredibly unwieldy. Not just the poles and wires, but the mine, the railway to take the coal from the mine to the plant... We are now a year or two past an inflection point -- building new coal plants at this time would seem like a much riskier investment. And that means the rate of construction is going to drop way below the rate of retirement pretty fast & pretty soon. And because solar has high variability, it's going to get overbuilt (nobody wants their battery to go flat much, so it'll spend most of it's time full). ie, there is going to be a bunch of "spare power" lurking around that is effectively free. And since a lot of problems can get turned into energy problems, that's a pretty happy place to be. Rash prediction: The Gold Coast currently has a mothballed desalination plant, and a water line from it to the South-East Queensland dams (built during the "Millenium drought"). I would not be surprised if within 30 years, it is running full-time, and pumping inland, even if the town-water dams are full -- because the marginal cost of running it instead of not-running it is zero, and with a bit more engineering the spill-over can be redirected to top up the Murray-Darling's flow. It'd require about 69kms of additional pipe, to connect Wivenhoe Dam to Cooby Dam. (Cooby Dam is in Toowoomba, which also has a bore into the Great Artesian Basin, so at that point you're inland enough to pump back into the basin. Draws from the basin have been blamed for the reduction in flows of springs that feed the Murray-Darling system...) The quantities of water down a pipe might be small, in river terms, but if the marginal cost of power during periods of excess is zero, and seawater is free, then it might start to seem odd not just to leave it turned on whenever there's spare load...
JamesLeonis 10y ago
I'm working on this problem right now. I believe the path to cheap water is through a massive fleet of solar stills floating in the South Pacific that passively collect evaporated water. Currently I'm working through my assumptions about biodegrading materials + construction, average loss (actuary) of such vessels in the region, logistics of collection/distribution over wide oceanic conditions, and how to build such a fleet incrementally without a massive amount of starting cash. The big reason I saw this as an opportunity is the huge investments Saudi Arabia and the surrounding region are investing in their own water supply, and the knowledge that California's water politics will push them in the same direction. While traditional desalinization will help, the costs in material and electricity are prohibitive for small players.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Isn't transporting all the water likely to cost more than distilling it on site?
  - JamesLeonis 10y ago
    To be honest I'm not sure. Transportation is one of the largest unknowns in this idea. On top of that, there's also the unknown of offloading the water at a given destination. My hope is to work out a solution that takes less energy than traditional desalinization for the same amount of water, even with the transportation energy requirements.
    - thinkingkong 10y ago
      Well. You should do some rough calculations on those requirements too with current shipping technology. Are there any water shipping ships?
      - josephv 10y ago
        Oil shipping ships could work
joshuamcginnis 10y ago
Why isn't there more support for nuclear-powered desalination? http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/nuclear-desalination.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-n...
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  I've always thought it really cool how we can collapse the water problem into the energy problem. (And, to be clear, I agree with your solution to the energy problem.)
  - debacle 10y ago
    Every problem is at its core an energy problem.
    - kmicklas 10y ago
      This is the one fact that keeps me relatively optimistic about the future of civilization.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  Only South Korea, Russia, and China appear to be able to build nuclear plants on a reasonable budget and timescale. And I'd put an asterisk next to project costs in Russia and China because they don't have great domestic transparency and the projects they offer to build abroad are pretty expensive. In addition to high costs, nuclear power projects often face opposition from the public in developed democratic nations. The region with highest current demand for desalination, Middle East/North Africa, is "blessed" with a lack of democracy. If the Saudi monarchy wants nuclear power they don't have to get voters on board -- no voting! But the costs are still high. And although Saudi Arabia would like to decrease its domestic fossil fuel consumption to free up more for exports, it doesn't want to accelerate a shift away from fossils elsewhere. IMO it's kind of a tightrope walk between advancing their own non-fossil energy sources, to grow/preserve export revenue, and avoiding a global shift away from fossils that could diminish their export revenue.
clumsysmurf 10y ago
Wondering if anyone is commercializing graphene based water filters anytime soon: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-revolutionary-graphene-filter-crisis.html http://phys.org/news/2016-03-revolutionary-graphene-filter-c... There is also nano-cellulose http://phys.org/news/2016-02-nano-cellulose-filters-highly-effective.html http://phys.org/news/2016-02-nano-cellulose-filters-highly-e...
FreezerburnV 10y ago
I actually have an uncle (on my wife's side) who is working on technology that can purify water via Ozone generation. (their website: http://www.ep-pure.com/ http://www.ep-pure.com/, and an article about what they're doing: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2014-03-23/companys-microplasma-technology-generating-interest.html http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2014-03-23/company...) They can actually produce a small box (about the size of a lunchbox) that generates enough ozone to purify a well for at least one family that costs less than $100 and powers itself via solar panel. (it might have been around $50 or less, but I don't remember the specifics) Along with the obvious benefit of being cheap, the "cartridge" that actually generates the ozone is recyclable, tiny, and easily replaceable by anybody. This is important because the current standard way of generating ozone is through complex industrial machinery that is difficult to service, requiring large, expensive parts. (they have a comparison of a current piece of the machinery that generates the ozone vs their cartridges in the office I visited) Note that while I'm related by marriage to one of the founders, I have no monetary stake in the company, so please don't take this as just a shill. I got to visit their (tiny) office where they're building the devices that generate the ozone, and it was just legitimately exciting to see what they were doing. I may not be a founder of the company or anything, but I got a pretty good explanation and tour. So if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
- hartator 10y ago
  Isn't ozone toxiq?
  - FreezerburnV 10y ago
    Yes, it is. However, because of that it works as an incredible sanitizer. I was just talking with my uncle and he was saying it can turn the nasty water in third world countries clear and purified within a minute. Normally toxicity like that would be a problem, but ozone is actually a highly unstable molecule. The reason it's toxic is because it is literally ripping other molecules apart to get components it wants to become completely safe oxygen. This property allows it to sanitize the water, and then leave the water completely drinkable and safe shortly after due to it completely transforming into something safe.
SamBam 10y ago
What is being done to use the brine produced by desalination? Whenever I look into this, it seems that all the brine questions revolve around how to dispose of it in a safe manner, or how to re-introduce it gradually to the sea. Why can't we turn brine into table salt, or use it in some industrial process?
- pranjalv123 10y ago
  Sea water is about 3.5% salt by weight [1]. The city of Los Angeles uses about 14 billion gallons of water in a month [2]. This works out to something like 2 million tons of salt being produced just by LA in a single month. So we can turn it into table salt... but it's something like six tons of table salt per year per person. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater [2]: http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water-use/los-angeles-department-of-water-and-power/ http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water-use/los-...
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Where does all the waste water go? If 10 billion goes down the sewer and back to the ocean, you can "re-salt" that water on the way out..
    - kaybe 10y ago
      Even better, you can build an osmosis power station and create a lot of electricity. The energy in the salinity difference between the water of a river and the water of the ocean is enormous. (It basically works like this: You have two containers with water of different salinities, connected with a membrane that only lets the water pass, but not the salt. The water will move through the membrane to balance the salinity - osmosis - and one container will have a rising water level, which can be used to generate electricity with turbines.)
      - s0rce 10y ago
        Wouldn't it be better to simply recycle the non-salty water instead?
franciscop 10y ago
From the linked article: > We’re now reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so you can apply here now. However the "Apply page" is highly misleading: > please submit your application online by 8 pm PT on October 4 So are water applications on a rolling basis or all of them?
- cbcoutinho 10y ago
  It also reads as if you will be moving to the Bay Area now - did they already make choices or was there a typo? The article is from today, but the rest of the details make me think otherwise. It's pretty confusing.. Another thing to think about - why move to the Bay Area? Water is not a software problem; water is an infrastructure, political, energy intensive (we're talking drinking water, right?), and most importantly cost prohibitive problem. What does moving to the Bay Area get you in this arrangement - besides access to YC people?
  - s0rce 10y ago
    If you are doing scientific R&D, the bay area has access to analytical facilities at Stanford, Berkeley and a few DOE labs. It's not the worst place in this regard. I'm sure you could manage in plenty of other places also, say Boston, for example. Source: I work at a startup in the bay area doing materials science research.
    - cbcoutinho 10y ago
      That's true, but I'm not sure you would have access to those institutions through YC unless you or your team have prior contacts at one of them. What's the startup?
- sctb 10y ago
  All applications are open on a rolling basis; the October 4 deadline is for the Winter 2017 batch. Applications for W17 after that time are still considered for late entry into the batch, but once things are well underway applications will switch to S17.
exabrial 10y ago
Water is a very California problem at the second... Not every part of the USA is in drought, but CA sure has. Nearly all of CAs water goes to agriculture. It's a shame there's so much snobbery and false information around GMOs... Having crops that could be grown with less water would be a huge benefit to the world. Amazes me that people will take the scientific highroad to global warming, but a witchcraft based approach with GMOs. That's where I'd put my focus
- swombat 10y ago
  > Amazes me that people will take the scientific highroad to global warming, but a witchcraft based approach with GMOs. Doesn't seem that amazing when you consider that in both cases people are trying to protect themselves against a perceived threat - the science has little to do with it, other than as a tool. Also, to be fair, most of food science is hardly worthy of the name. We can barely tell what makes a healthy diet in general. How can any scientist worthy of the name say that all GMO's are safe for long term, regular human consumption when they can't even say that about non-GMOs? (see disagreements about whether something as simple as refined sugar or meat should be a regular part of a healthy diet)
- philipkglass 10y ago
  The United States is the world's largest user of GMOs in agriculture. Here are the top agricultural commodities produced in California: https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/ https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/ Are water-thrifty GMO variants of those crops commercially available? Have they been rejected in California due to GMO-fear? The answer to both needs to be "yes" to blame GMO fearmongering for California's water problems. (I don't disagree that fear of GMOs is overblown, but original comment gave no evidence it's causing the CA water problems.)
- virmundi 10y ago
  Is GMO fear unfounded? We're talking about grafting in genes from other species. We don't know how that might affect safety. We, in the USA, don't require testing for safety. How do we know that such changes is not like biological asbestos? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now we know that it's terrible. Imagine doing that to your food population all the while enforcing draconian IP laws on farms not using such products, but caught up in the wind.
DoodleBuggy 10y ago
It seems the lowest hanging fruit is rather simple; protect existing clean water supplies. Not sure how exciting of a startup idea it is to buy up and preserve large tracks of land containing water and aquifers, though.
nyxtom 10y ago
Agriculture takes up the majority of the use of water consumption. (Nearly 70% of all water use - http://www.worldometers.info/water/ http://www.worldometers.info/water/). Of that consumption, in terms of irrigation, nearly 50% of the water is lost to evaporation (https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html). There have been solutions to this problem with urban farming practices with a combination of hydroponics and vermiponics for a number of years which can grow quite a bit of usable produce in a smaller land area using significantly less water. Also, it could be useful to continue to break down these statistics by crop and water use. For instance, almond farms appear to take up nearly 10% of California's water use (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...). Doing so would lend credence to which crop would be most effective for first improving upon. This report appears to suggest that alfalfa is one of the neediest crops grown in California in terms of water consumption. There are obvious other crops as well, in terms of land area (Corn being one of them) but nevertheless it's worth noting. https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/hanson.pdf https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/han... Now, you might be asking, what is alfalfa for? Alfalfa is grown as a feed for animals, mainly dairy cows. Dairy cows eat roughly 70% of the alfalfa produced in the US. It's important to note that some alfalfa farmers tend to disagree that solutions like drip irrigation will work effectively enough - as it sometimes depends on the soil type and exposure to critters chewing up the pipes. (http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/jul/03/how-one-california-alfalfa-farmer-cut-his-water-us/ http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/jul/03/how-one-california-alfa...)
- Detect 10y ago
  Adjusting our meat consumption has a huge effect on agricultural water usage as well.
  - nyxtom 10y ago
    Indeed, there are also alternative methods to feeding cattle that can even reduce methane emissions such as seaweed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990831132210.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990831132210.h...)
olakease 10y ago
If politicians were working for the common good and not just for the big transnational companies we will not have this problem. What about fixing that?
Detect 10y ago
Making clean water extremely abundant and cheap is also part of the problem. When it's cheap and abundant, instead of valuing it, we tend to waste and pollute it. In many places, we're not paying the true cost of clean water. In other places, some bioregions just can't support as many people as it does today without expensive technology and its unintended consequences. It's not technology that needs to change; it's our worldview about our relationship with water.
- anubisresources 10y ago
  Exactly. Best way to deal with drought is to privatize the water supply and raise the price of water. Higher water prices leads to low value agricultural production moving elsewhere, minimizing water consumption.
  - solarengineer 10y ago
    Could water cost be increased without the privatisation? I'm apprehensive about corporates taking the pricing to another extreme [0] [0] http://yournewswire.com/nestle-ceo-water-is-not-a-human-right-should-be-privatized/ http://yournewswire.com/nestle-ceo-water-is-not-a-human-righ...
    - anubisresources 10y ago
      The state could raise the price, but the issues with water, particularly in the developing world, require substantial amounts of investment in distribution, cleaning, etc. Likely will require additional investment from private sector. Also, a political entity like the state is unlikely to arrive at an efficient price. Likely to still be underpriced due to political pressure. There's a really good book by Fedrik Segerfeldt called "Water for Sale". I highly recommend checking it out. It goes over some possible public-private partnerships that could help expand water access and minimize excessive water usage. https://smile.amazon.com/Water-Sale-Business-Market-Resolve/dp/1930865767/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483489613&sr=8-1&keywords=water+for+sale https://smile.amazon.com/Water-Sale-Business-Market-Resolve/... It gets a bit preachy at points, but its a quick read and goes over how to price water, investments that need to be made, etc
hackuser 10y ago
> We’re optimistic we will beat climate change. But, at the same time, we need to prepare for things to get worse. No, we need to act urgently to stop climate change; saying only "We're optimistic" sends the message that it's not a critical problem that needs urgent attention.
personlurking 10y ago
For what it's worth, I remember seeing a shower system, a few years ago, out of Scandinavia that recycles water (5 liters used instead of the normal 150 liters). IIRC, it's the one in the video [1]. On a personal note, it really is amazing how little water one needs to shower with when using a bucket, as I once had to do while in Brazil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYoeHFJAyhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYoeHFJAyhU [3m50s] Edit: It seems they're hiring, too. https://orbital-systems.com/en-eu/about-us/ https://orbital-systems.com/en-eu/about-us/
joshuak 10y ago
Ok, I'll bite. I'm the dumbing guy in the room, so I need some help understanding. Given that water is 71% of the earth's surface[1], it seems like this is mostly a transportation problem. We don't need to create water, unless that would make transport easer. We don't need to filter water, unless that is easer to do then transporting it. In the case of drought, the problem seems to be the transport of water, and near zero cost irrigation provided normally by rain. Optimal water transportation seems to be the core problem to solve. With cost effective localized irrigation replacement for rain a subset related problem. (Perhaps if drought is more spacial than temporal, the irrigation solution could be temporary and mobil so as to move to areas of drought as needed). So what ways can we think of to transport water? Or if that's not the core problem, then what is the right problem to solve? [1]:https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html
- anubisresources 10y ago
  Transportation is extremely expensive, and in every case I've researched more expensive than local production or recycling. I'm one in a long line of people who have looked into the failed idea[1] of buying an old single hull oil tanker, gutting the insides, cleaning and refitting, and running it between Sitka and LA filled with water. Much cheaper to produce in LA. Current sale price in LA is very low - largely due to state subsidies and lack of an actual water market, but thats unlikely to change soon. If you can lower the energy cost of transport its still likely cheaper to produce locally, due to high energy cost of desalination and wastewater recycling. Large plastic bladders are another possibility for transportation. Just let the current take the bags down the coast and fix a GPS to the bag. Lots of issues with other boats destroying the bladders though, along with running aground, etc. Likely still cheaper to produce locally. Only economic way to transport water currently is in water dense crops like rice, tomatoes, corn, most fruits, etc. [1] http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/us-company-set-to-ship-billions-of-gallons-of-water-from-alaska-to-india.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/us-company-set-to-ship... Edit: To answer the question at the bottom of your post, the real problem is energy. If you lower the cost of energy production and storage, you've removed a huge chunk of water production costs. Focusing on water first is likely to lead nowhere.
20years 10y ago
Too bad you have to be in the bay area. My son and I have been working on a system that captures, stores, filters water and the whole thing is powered by solar. Already did a small working prototype and are now working on a bigger one. Can't be in the bay area though and we really need access to land/yard space which we have where we are at.
- anubisresources 10y ago
  I'm guessing this is for personal use and not agricultural or industrial? How does the cost per gallon compare with desalination and wastewater recycling?
  - 20years 10y ago
    Hoping to eventually target agricultural but we are not near that stage. The current prototype we are working on is being developed more for personal home use and communal type gardens. We have 2 local communal gardens in town that we will be testing it out on after our backyard prototype is complete. Initially the captured/stored water will primarily be used for watering and cleaning. We would eventually like the water to be drinkable too but that's a ways off. It is more than just a capture/store system though. It taps into multiple sensors to determine how much water to use for given situations in order to not waste the water it does capture. Honestly, I don't know how the cost would compare with desalination and wastewater recycling. Isn't desalination really expensive?
    - anubisresources 10y ago
      Desalination is pretty pricey at ~$2000 per acre foot, but desalination and wastewater recycling are your likely competition. Assuming of course that you're only going to sell this in drought-stricken areas. If you're aiming for wetter areas, you're competing with rain water, and its tough to beat free. Could you give a walkthrough of how this works? I'm trying to get a better grasp on your prototype
      - 10y ago
keithnz 10y ago
we are doing a bunch of tech around better water usage on farms. http://www.mywildeye.com/wildeye/ http://www.mywildeye.com/wildeye/ We have done a bunch of work in New Zealand and Australia and now moving into California and the rest of the US. One of the big things is not just to optimize water, but optimize the whole problem which water is one part of.
kanzure 10y ago
How about moving around some ice bergs to areas in need of fresh water? Dassault was working on "Project Ice Dream" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL5blnAH9xw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL5blnAH9xw - which centered on tugboats to move ice bergs around... sails would probably work too. This also doubles as large-scale cargo transportation between continents, for cargo that can tolerate a 6 month journey. An awful lot of cargo can fit on an ice berg with a surface area of many hundreds of square kilometers..... more: http://gnusha.org/logs/html/2016-11-22.log.html#t20:04-166 http://gnusha.org/logs/html/2016-11-22.log.html#t20:04-166
- bootload 10y ago
  "How about moving around some ice bergs to areas in need of fresh water?" Not easy. This was a problem my high school math tutor, a glaciologist discussed with me one evening doing some applied math. cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12341964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12341964
  - kanzure 10y ago
    Tugboats aren't the only option--- you could use on-shore rope wrangling and pulling, you could use sails, you could use focused orbital mirrors to melt ice on one side as a propulsive force... and so on.
    - bootload 10y ago
      This idea of pushing, pulling icebergs was investigated by ppl much smarter than me (Glaciology/Maths dept. Uni Melb) to see if it was at least feasible. The idea has some merit, the physics (moments of inertia) get in the way. Make for an interesting experiment to prove how.
msd81257 10y ago
Surprised no one's mentioned Nebia: https://nebia.com https://nebia.com Super cool startup working on minimising water usage through increasing the surface area/volume ratio of water droplets while taking a shower.
- jayjay71 10y ago
  Nebia is already funded by Y Combinator (S15).
Entangled 10y ago
Whatever the solutions, I'd like to see distributed, decentralized and individual water generation/purification systems, specially using solar.
marknutter 10y ago
I thought the whole point of YCombinator was to find startups run by people who are willing to listen to the market, "pivoting" to what might be a different problem in a different market.
niftich 10y ago
What is the current state-of-the-art for portable, personal water purification methods and devices, like the sort you could use to treat a bottle's worth of water? Devices like the LifeStraw [1], the LifeSaver bottle [2], the WaterIsLife straw [3], and the SteriPEN [4], are nice, but they're pricey. Any ways of reducing the cost? [1] http://lifestraw.com/ http://lifestraw.com/ [2] http://www.iconlifesaver.eu/ http://www.iconlifesaver.eu/ [3] http://waterislife.com/clean-water/the-straw http://waterislife.com/clean-water/the-straw [4] https://www.steripen.com/ https://www.steripen.com/
nether 10y ago
Is YC spreading this announcement anywhere else? Seems like Engineers Without Borders might be a good audience (which is mostly civil/environmental/mechanical engineers IME).
mmmBacon 10y ago
Michael Burry of The Big Short fame is investing in water. Pretty interesting article about investing in water. http://vintagevalueinvesting.com/how-to-invest-in-water-like-michael-burry-from-the-big-short/ http://vintagevalueinvesting.com/how-to-invest-in-water-like...
torpfactory 10y ago
Here's an idea: Build out massive solar and wind power capacity and create electricity for the grid. Use specially designed desalination plants which operate well at low utilization and significant swings in production to smooth out the peaks in the solar / wind production curves. Excess power is converted into clean water. Water seems like a reasonably good place to "store" the value of the energy you just created. Furthermore, what is the value of having a somewhat more predictable power supply from solar and wind resources?
digitalengineer 10y ago
Great timing :-) We've got a lot of experience with water I n the Netherlands (that little country that was partially build out of the ocean and that's several meters below sea level. Y-combinator should become a member of Water Alliance: "The Water Alliance focuses on innovative and sustainable water technology that can be used worldwide". Startups around water technology, a university and global businesses like Philips and more. See: http://wateralliance.nl/en/about-us/ http://wateralliance.nl/en/about-us/
PerfectElement 10y ago
Aren't companies like Hampton Creek, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods indirectly working on this? I'd love to see other types of innovation but it seems to me that the lowest hanging fruit is to decrease the demand for animal based foods.
delegate 10y ago
> We’re optimistic we will beat climate change. "Beat" climate change ? I think you people totally misunderstand the problem then. The reason it's happening in the first place is very simple and we all know it: mindless, senseless, useless consumption of everything. Armies of methodically brainwashed "consumers" unleashed upon the limited world around them - under the war drums of advertising and marketing. Water tech will help, but it will not fix climate change... You can't "beat" climate change without addressing the elephant in the room. Now that's a truly "hard" problem.
- Kiro 10y ago
  You make it sound like consumption is only a bad thing.
SeoxyS 10y ago
Isn't the obvious solution here cheap/clean electricity = cheap/clean purified water? Seems higher leverage to focus on the energy part of the equation.
spangry 10y ago
I don't know if this is useful, but if you're looking to acquire more background knowledge from someone with 'expertise' on water scarcity, perhaps you might consider contacting the Singaporean government? Water scarcity became a major policy issue for them around the time they were kicked out of the Malaysian Federation in the 60s, probably because their main water supply is located in Malaysia... They currently have the capacity to satisfy 30% of their water demand using 'reclaimed water' (i.e. recycled) and 10% using desalinated. Although I don't think they actually need to fully utilise these capacities as 50-75 per cent of their water needs are met by man-made rainfall catchments [0]. I realise how strange it is to say 'just go have a chat with the Singaporean government', but I suspect they'd be happy share their expertise. My sketchy understanding is that Singapore has found that 'reclaimed' (i.e. recycled) water is far more cost-effective (and cleaner) compared to desalinated water. And despite being a semi-benevolent autocracy, the Singaporean government has had to work pretty hard to convince their population that there's nothing wrong with drinking recycled water (i.e. water that previously had poop in it). Learning how they overcame this issue could be valuable... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Singapore#Water_sources_and_integrated_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
andrewl 10y ago
This letter to the editor from the January 3, 2017 New York Times argues for public funding of water systems: Failures of the Private Water Industry http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opinion/failures-of-the-private-water-industry.html http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opinion/failures-of-the-pr... I wonder if there's any public funding of water system research?
ALee 10y ago
I've thought a lot about this and the key is not just technology, but the ability to quickly automate the markets for the sale of water. In many cases, water is plentiful, it's just very hard to get it somewhere. Infrastructure combined with a way to automate water rights exchanges is a really important part of this equation.
Pica_soO 10y ago
If the climate becomes unreliable you need large scale underground water storage of rain to compensate this. Basically you need cheap, replaceable solar-pumps (that one is allready doable). And you need cheap, near surface volumes dug out and sealed. Actually all you need for that is - a water pump and a glorified fridge. You drill a initial hole- and now you pump water in and freeze it. Water expands, you thaw it and repeat. Basically a giant intentional pothole. Now, anyone here into tunnel engineering? How to cheaply seal the resulting artificial cavern?
dang 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20170801000000*/https://blog.ycombinator.com/request-for-startups-water/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170801000000*/https://blog.yco...

229 points by craigcannon 10y ago

cjbenedikt 10y ago

Finally! Congrats!

toomuchtodo 10y ago

Maybe reach out to these folks? https://openawg.github.io/ https://openawg.github.io/

gault8121 10y ago
This is awesome. Thanks for sharing.

saycheese 10y ago

>> "We’re now reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so you can apply here now." What percentage of YC investments are funded on a rolling basis?

8a 10y ago
What changed? On what basis where applications reviewed before? What do you mean here by rolling basis?

chermanowicz 10y ago

I'm excited about this quite a bit, but does YC have any experts on water & science/engineering in general? "lower-cost desalination plants, novel purification technologies" are technical science & engineering problems often closely tied to academia & research. Fortunately though there are some great resources in the Bay Area in these fields.

sciurus 10y ago

If you want a picture of what life could be like if we don't get ahead of the problem, read The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. http://windupstories.com/books/water-knife/ http://windupstories.com/books/water-knife/

pcmaffey 10y ago
In similar vein, an interesting indie sci-fi movie from Mexico dealing with the topic: Sleep Dealer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/

sethbannon 10y ago

Love seeing YC increasingly focus on helping solve the world's biggest problems.

Animats 10y ago

Whatever happened to Kamen's "Slingshot" water purifier? [1] It was a little vapor compression distillation unit powered by a Stirling cycle engine. There was a tabletop-sized model, and a shipping-container sized model. There were announcements of field tests. Heavy PR around 2012, then silence. There were a few demo installations, but it never appeared as a volume product. There's a similar technology from Simon Frasier University.[2] They're looking for someone to commercialize it. A YC startup might start by deploying that technology in East Porterville, CA, where the wells have gone dry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_(water_vapor_distillation_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_(water_vapor_distill... [2] https://www.biv.com/article/2016/5/water-machines-creator-thirsty-market/ https://www.biv.com/article/2016/5/water-machines-creator-th...

EnFinlay 10y ago
*Simon Fraser University Edit: I am also very curious about what happened to that bad-ass machine from Kamen.
- tim333 10y ago
  No special info but the machine looked awful expensive for the amount of water it would make.
  - burgreblast 10y ago
    The Israeli desalination plant "Sorek can produce a thousand liters (264 gal) of drinking water for 58 cents." And it can produce 624Km3/day or 150M m3 of water a year. That's 20% of Israeli domestic consumption. That's $0.002 per gallon, about what CA water costs. All fresh from the sea. 75X cheaper than the 0.15 cents per gallon @mojomark estimates in the thread below that it would cost in fuel costs alone for a tanker to ship water from alaska. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the... I can't tell exactly, but the $0.58/1000 liters seems to be amortizing the $400M investment cost, because it's on a 25 year Build - Operate - Transfer contract.
10y ago

jly 10y ago

I don't share a strong sense of optimism that we'll 'beat climate change'. We need to fundamentally change how humans live on this planet and interact with our ecosystems to move past issues like this. Projects like these will certainly help a lot of people in the near-term, but I fear they distract us from addressing the real problems. Sadly, the real problems don't have much of a financial incentive to be solved.

thesagan 10y ago
I'm with you on that one. The current patterns of human consumption are too slow to change in the face of the type of climate change we are looking at. Even simple things like the obscene volume of packaging used for marketing and antitheft measures speak against real reform occurring soon.
- wbillingsley 10y ago
  I can't help but be reminded of the factoid that in 1898 international planning conferences were flummoxed on how on earth to deal with the ever-increasing problem of the amount of horse manure in cities... by 1912, not so much. Now solar is cheap, coal seems incredibly unwieldy. Not just the poles and wires, but the mine, the railway to take the coal from the mine to the plant... We are now a year or two past an inflection point -- building new coal plants at this time would seem like a much riskier investment. And that means the rate of construction is going to drop way below the rate of retirement pretty fast & pretty soon. And because solar has high variability, it's going to get overbuilt (nobody wants their battery to go flat much, so it'll spend most of it's time full). ie, there is going to be a bunch of "spare power" lurking around that is effectively free. And since a lot of problems can get turned into energy problems, that's a pretty happy place to be. Rash prediction: The Gold Coast currently has a mothballed desalination plant, and a water line from it to the South-East Queensland dams (built during the "Millenium drought"). I would not be surprised if within 30 years, it is running full-time, and pumping inland, even if the town-water dams are full -- because the marginal cost of running it instead of not-running it is zero, and with a bit more engineering the spill-over can be redirected to top up the Murray-Darling's flow. It'd require about 69kms of additional pipe, to connect Wivenhoe Dam to Cooby Dam. (Cooby Dam is in Toowoomba, which also has a bore into the Great Artesian Basin, so at that point you're inland enough to pump back into the basin. Draws from the basin have been blamed for the reduction in flows of springs that feed the Murray-Darling system...) The quantities of water down a pipe might be small, in river terms, but if the marginal cost of power during periods of excess is zero, and seawater is free, then it might start to seem odd not just to leave it turned on whenever there's spare load...

JamesLeonis 10y ago

I'm working on this problem right now. I believe the path to cheap water is through a massive fleet of solar stills floating in the South Pacific that passively collect evaporated water. Currently I'm working through my assumptions about biodegrading materials + construction, average loss (actuary) of such vessels in the region, logistics of collection/distribution over wide oceanic conditions, and how to build such a fleet incrementally without a massive amount of starting cash. The big reason I saw this as an opportunity is the huge investments Saudi Arabia and the surrounding region are investing in their own water supply, and the knowledge that California's water politics will push them in the same direction. While traditional desalinization will help, the costs in material and electricity are prohibitive for small players.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
Isn't transporting all the water likely to cost more than distilling it on site?
- JamesLeonis 10y ago
  To be honest I'm not sure. Transportation is one of the largest unknowns in this idea. On top of that, there's also the unknown of offloading the water at a given destination. My hope is to work out a solution that takes less energy than traditional desalinization for the same amount of water, even with the transportation energy requirements.
  - thinkingkong 10y ago
    Well. You should do some rough calculations on those requirements too with current shipping technology. Are there any water shipping ships?
    - josephv 10y ago
      Oil shipping ships could work

joshuamcginnis 10y ago

Why isn't there more support for nuclear-powered desalination? http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/nuclear-desalination.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-n...

Ericson2314 10y ago
I've always thought it really cool how we can collapse the water problem into the energy problem. (And, to be clear, I agree with your solution to the energy problem.)
- debacle 10y ago
  Every problem is at its core an energy problem.
  - kmicklas 10y ago
    This is the one fact that keeps me relatively optimistic about the future of civilization.
philipkglass 10y ago
Only South Korea, Russia, and China appear to be able to build nuclear plants on a reasonable budget and timescale. And I'd put an asterisk next to project costs in Russia and China because they don't have great domestic transparency and the projects they offer to build abroad are pretty expensive. In addition to high costs, nuclear power projects often face opposition from the public in developed democratic nations. The region with highest current demand for desalination, Middle East/North Africa, is "blessed" with a lack of democracy. If the Saudi monarchy wants nuclear power they don't have to get voters on board -- no voting! But the costs are still high. And although Saudi Arabia would like to decrease its domestic fossil fuel consumption to free up more for exports, it doesn't want to accelerate a shift away from fossils elsewhere. IMO it's kind of a tightrope walk between advancing their own non-fossil energy sources, to grow/preserve export revenue, and avoiding a global shift away from fossils that could diminish their export revenue.

clumsysmurf 10y ago

Wondering if anyone is commercializing graphene based water filters anytime soon: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-revolutionary-graphene-filter-crisis.html http://phys.org/news/2016-03-revolutionary-graphene-filter-c... There is also nano-cellulose http://phys.org/news/2016-02-nano-cellulose-filters-highly-effective.html http://phys.org/news/2016-02-nano-cellulose-filters-highly-e...

FreezerburnV 10y ago

I actually have an uncle (on my wife's side) who is working on technology that can purify water via Ozone generation. (their website: http://www.ep-pure.com/ http://www.ep-pure.com/, and an article about what they're doing: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2014-03-23/companys-microplasma-technology-generating-interest.html http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2014-03-23/company...) They can actually produce a small box (about the size of a lunchbox) that generates enough ozone to purify a well for at least one family that costs less than $100 and powers itself via solar panel. (it might have been around $50 or less, but I don't remember the specifics) Along with the obvious benefit of being cheap, the "cartridge" that actually generates the ozone is recyclable, tiny, and easily replaceable by anybody. This is important because the current standard way of generating ozone is through complex industrial machinery that is difficult to service, requiring large, expensive parts. (they have a comparison of a current piece of the machinery that generates the ozone vs their cartridges in the office I visited) Note that while I'm related by marriage to one of the founders, I have no monetary stake in the company, so please don't take this as just a shill. I got to visit their (tiny) office where they're building the devices that generate the ozone, and it was just legitimately exciting to see what they were doing. I may not be a founder of the company or anything, but I got a pretty good explanation and tour. So if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

hartator 10y ago
Isn't ozone toxiq?
- FreezerburnV 10y ago
  Yes, it is. However, because of that it works as an incredible sanitizer. I was just talking with my uncle and he was saying it can turn the nasty water in third world countries clear and purified within a minute. Normally toxicity like that would be a problem, but ozone is actually a highly unstable molecule. The reason it's toxic is because it is literally ripping other molecules apart to get components it wants to become completely safe oxygen. This property allows it to sanitize the water, and then leave the water completely drinkable and safe shortly after due to it completely transforming into something safe.

SamBam 10y ago

What is being done to use the brine produced by desalination? Whenever I look into this, it seems that all the brine questions revolve around how to dispose of it in a safe manner, or how to re-introduce it gradually to the sea. Why can't we turn brine into table salt, or use it in some industrial process?

pranjalv123 10y ago
Sea water is about 3.5% salt by weight [1]. The city of Los Angeles uses about 14 billion gallons of water in a month [2]. This works out to something like 2 million tons of salt being produced just by LA in a single month. So we can turn it into table salt... but it's something like six tons of table salt per year per person. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater [2]: http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water-use/los-angeles-department-of-water-and-power/ http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water-use/los-...
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Where does all the waste water go? If 10 billion goes down the sewer and back to the ocean, you can "re-salt" that water on the way out..
  - kaybe 10y ago
    Even better, you can build an osmosis power station and create a lot of electricity. The energy in the salinity difference between the water of a river and the water of the ocean is enormous. (It basically works like this: You have two containers with water of different salinities, connected with a membrane that only lets the water pass, but not the salt. The water will move through the membrane to balance the salinity - osmosis - and one container will have a rising water level, which can be used to generate electricity with turbines.)
    - s0rce 10y ago
      Wouldn't it be better to simply recycle the non-salty water instead?

franciscop 10y ago

From the linked article: > We’re now reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so you can apply here now. However the "Apply page" is highly misleading: > please submit your application online by 8 pm PT on October 4 So are water applications on a rolling basis or all of them?

cbcoutinho 10y ago
It also reads as if you will be moving to the Bay Area now - did they already make choices or was there a typo? The article is from today, but the rest of the details make me think otherwise. It's pretty confusing.. Another thing to think about - why move to the Bay Area? Water is not a software problem; water is an infrastructure, political, energy intensive (we're talking drinking water, right?), and most importantly cost prohibitive problem. What does moving to the Bay Area get you in this arrangement - besides access to YC people?
- s0rce 10y ago
  If you are doing scientific R&D, the bay area has access to analytical facilities at Stanford, Berkeley and a few DOE labs. It's not the worst place in this regard. I'm sure you could manage in plenty of other places also, say Boston, for example. Source: I work at a startup in the bay area doing materials science research.
  - cbcoutinho 10y ago
    That's true, but I'm not sure you would have access to those institutions through YC unless you or your team have prior contacts at one of them. What's the startup?
sctb 10y ago
All applications are open on a rolling basis; the October 4 deadline is for the Winter 2017 batch. Applications for W17 after that time are still considered for late entry into the batch, but once things are well underway applications will switch to S17.

exabrial 10y ago

Water is a very California problem at the second... Not every part of the USA is in drought, but CA sure has. Nearly all of CAs water goes to agriculture. It's a shame there's so much snobbery and false information around GMOs... Having crops that could be grown with less water would be a huge benefit to the world. Amazes me that people will take the scientific highroad to global warming, but a witchcraft based approach with GMOs. That's where I'd put my focus

swombat 10y ago
> Amazes me that people will take the scientific highroad to global warming, but a witchcraft based approach with GMOs. Doesn't seem that amazing when you consider that in both cases people are trying to protect themselves against a perceived threat - the science has little to do with it, other than as a tool. Also, to be fair, most of food science is hardly worthy of the name. We can barely tell what makes a healthy diet in general. How can any scientist worthy of the name say that all GMO's are safe for long term, regular human consumption when they can't even say that about non-GMOs? (see disagreements about whether something as simple as refined sugar or meat should be a regular part of a healthy diet)
philipkglass 10y ago
The United States is the world's largest user of GMOs in agriculture. Here are the top agricultural commodities produced in California: https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/ https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/ Are water-thrifty GMO variants of those crops commercially available? Have they been rejected in California due to GMO-fear? The answer to both needs to be "yes" to blame GMO fearmongering for California's water problems. (I don't disagree that fear of GMOs is overblown, but original comment gave no evidence it's causing the CA water problems.)
virmundi 10y ago
Is GMO fear unfounded? We're talking about grafting in genes from other species. We don't know how that might affect safety. We, in the USA, don't require testing for safety. How do we know that such changes is not like biological asbestos? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now we know that it's terrible. Imagine doing that to your food population all the while enforcing draconian IP laws on farms not using such products, but caught up in the wind.

DoodleBuggy 10y ago

It seems the lowest hanging fruit is rather simple; protect existing clean water supplies. Not sure how exciting of a startup idea it is to buy up and preserve large tracks of land containing water and aquifers, though.

nyxtom 10y ago

Agriculture takes up the majority of the use of water consumption. (Nearly 70% of all water use - http://www.worldometers.info/water/ http://www.worldometers.info/water/). Of that consumption, in terms of irrigation, nearly 50% of the water is lost to evaporation (https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html). There have been solutions to this problem with urban farming practices with a combination of hydroponics and vermiponics for a number of years which can grow quite a bit of usable produce in a smaller land area using significantly less water. Also, it could be useful to continue to break down these statistics by crop and water use. For instance, almond farms appear to take up nearly 10% of California's water use (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...). Doing so would lend credence to which crop would be most effective for first improving upon. This report appears to suggest that alfalfa is one of the neediest crops grown in California in terms of water consumption. There are obvious other crops as well, in terms of land area (Corn being one of them) but nevertheless it's worth noting. https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/hanson.pdf https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/han... Now, you might be asking, what is alfalfa for? Alfalfa is grown as a feed for animals, mainly dairy cows. Dairy cows eat roughly 70% of the alfalfa produced in the US. It's important to note that some alfalfa farmers tend to disagree that solutions like drip irrigation will work effectively enough - as it sometimes depends on the soil type and exposure to critters chewing up the pipes. (http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/jul/03/how-one-california-alfalfa-farmer-cut-his-water-us/ http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/jul/03/how-one-california-alfa...)

Detect 10y ago
Adjusting our meat consumption has a huge effect on agricultural water usage as well.
- nyxtom 10y ago
  Indeed, there are also alternative methods to feeding cattle that can even reduce methane emissions such as seaweed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990831132210.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990831132210.h...)

olakease 10y ago

If politicians were working for the common good and not just for the big transnational companies we will not have this problem. What about fixing that?

Detect 10y ago

Making clean water extremely abundant and cheap is also part of the problem. When it's cheap and abundant, instead of valuing it, we tend to waste and pollute it. In many places, we're not paying the true cost of clean water. In other places, some bioregions just can't support as many people as it does today without expensive technology and its unintended consequences. It's not technology that needs to change; it's our worldview about our relationship with water.

anubisresources 10y ago
Exactly. Best way to deal with drought is to privatize the water supply and raise the price of water. Higher water prices leads to low value agricultural production moving elsewhere, minimizing water consumption.
- solarengineer 10y ago
  Could water cost be increased without the privatisation? I'm apprehensive about corporates taking the pricing to another extreme [0] [0] http://yournewswire.com/nestle-ceo-water-is-not-a-human-right-should-be-privatized/ http://yournewswire.com/nestle-ceo-water-is-not-a-human-righ...
  - anubisresources 10y ago
    The state could raise the price, but the issues with water, particularly in the developing world, require substantial amounts of investment in distribution, cleaning, etc. Likely will require additional investment from private sector. Also, a political entity like the state is unlikely to arrive at an efficient price. Likely to still be underpriced due to political pressure. There's a really good book by Fedrik Segerfeldt called "Water for Sale". I highly recommend checking it out. It goes over some possible public-private partnerships that could help expand water access and minimize excessive water usage. https://smile.amazon.com/Water-Sale-Business-Market-Resolve/dp/1930865767/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483489613&sr=8-1&keywords=water+for+sale https://smile.amazon.com/Water-Sale-Business-Market-Resolve/... It gets a bit preachy at points, but its a quick read and goes over how to price water, investments that need to be made, etc

hackuser 10y ago

> We’re optimistic we will beat climate change. But, at the same time, we need to prepare for things to get worse. No, we need to act urgently to stop climate change; saying only "We're optimistic" sends the message that it's not a critical problem that needs urgent attention.

personlurking 10y ago

For what it's worth, I remember seeing a shower system, a few years ago, out of Scandinavia that recycles water (5 liters used instead of the normal 150 liters). IIRC, it's the one in the video [1]. On a personal note, it really is amazing how little water one needs to shower with when using a bucket, as I once had to do while in Brazil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYoeHFJAyhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYoeHFJAyhU [3m50s] Edit: It seems they're hiring, too. https://orbital-systems.com/en-eu/about-us/ https://orbital-systems.com/en-eu/about-us/

joshuak 10y ago

Ok, I'll bite. I'm the dumbing guy in the room, so I need some help understanding. Given that water is 71% of the earth's surface[1], it seems like this is mostly a transportation problem. We don't need to create water, unless that would make transport easer. We don't need to filter water, unless that is easer to do then transporting it. In the case of drought, the problem seems to be the transport of water, and near zero cost irrigation provided normally by rain. Optimal water transportation seems to be the core problem to solve. With cost effective localized irrigation replacement for rain a subset related problem. (Perhaps if drought is more spacial than temporal, the irrigation solution could be temporary and mobil so as to move to areas of drought as needed). So what ways can we think of to transport water? Or if that's not the core problem, then what is the right problem to solve? [1]:https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html

anubisresources 10y ago
Transportation is extremely expensive, and in every case I've researched more expensive than local production or recycling. I'm one in a long line of people who have looked into the failed idea[1] of buying an old single hull oil tanker, gutting the insides, cleaning and refitting, and running it between Sitka and LA filled with water. Much cheaper to produce in LA. Current sale price in LA is very low - largely due to state subsidies and lack of an actual water market, but thats unlikely to change soon. If you can lower the energy cost of transport its still likely cheaper to produce locally, due to high energy cost of desalination and wastewater recycling. Large plastic bladders are another possibility for transportation. Just let the current take the bags down the coast and fix a GPS to the bag. Lots of issues with other boats destroying the bladders though, along with running aground, etc. Likely still cheaper to produce locally. Only economic way to transport water currently is in water dense crops like rice, tomatoes, corn, most fruits, etc. [1] http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/us-company-set-to-ship-billions-of-gallons-of-water-from-alaska-to-india.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/us-company-set-to-ship... Edit: To answer the question at the bottom of your post, the real problem is energy. If you lower the cost of energy production and storage, you've removed a huge chunk of water production costs. Focusing on water first is likely to lead nowhere.

20years 10y ago

Too bad you have to be in the bay area. My son and I have been working on a system that captures, stores, filters water and the whole thing is powered by solar. Already did a small working prototype and are now working on a bigger one. Can't be in the bay area though and we really need access to land/yard space which we have where we are at.

anubisresources 10y ago
I'm guessing this is for personal use and not agricultural or industrial? How does the cost per gallon compare with desalination and wastewater recycling?
- 20years 10y ago
  Hoping to eventually target agricultural but we are not near that stage. The current prototype we are working on is being developed more for personal home use and communal type gardens. We have 2 local communal gardens in town that we will be testing it out on after our backyard prototype is complete. Initially the captured/stored water will primarily be used for watering and cleaning. We would eventually like the water to be drinkable too but that's a ways off. It is more than just a capture/store system though. It taps into multiple sensors to determine how much water to use for given situations in order to not waste the water it does capture. Honestly, I don't know how the cost would compare with desalination and wastewater recycling. Isn't desalination really expensive?
  - anubisresources 10y ago
    Desalination is pretty pricey at ~$2000 per acre foot, but desalination and wastewater recycling are your likely competition. Assuming of course that you're only going to sell this in drought-stricken areas. If you're aiming for wetter areas, you're competing with rain water, and its tough to beat free. Could you give a walkthrough of how this works? I'm trying to get a better grasp on your prototype
    - 10y ago

keithnz 10y ago

we are doing a bunch of tech around better water usage on farms. http://www.mywildeye.com/wildeye/ http://www.mywildeye.com/wildeye/ We have done a bunch of work in New Zealand and Australia and now moving into California and the rest of the US. One of the big things is not just to optimize water, but optimize the whole problem which water is one part of.

kanzure 10y ago

How about moving around some ice bergs to areas in need of fresh water? Dassault was working on "Project Ice Dream" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL5blnAH9xw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL5blnAH9xw - which centered on tugboats to move ice bergs around... sails would probably work too. This also doubles as large-scale cargo transportation between continents, for cargo that can tolerate a 6 month journey. An awful lot of cargo can fit on an ice berg with a surface area of many hundreds of square kilometers..... more: http://gnusha.org/logs/html/2016-11-22.log.html#t20:04-166 http://gnusha.org/logs/html/2016-11-22.log.html#t20:04-166

bootload 10y ago
"How about moving around some ice bergs to areas in need of fresh water?" Not easy. This was a problem my high school math tutor, a glaciologist discussed with me one evening doing some applied math. cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12341964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12341964
- kanzure 10y ago
  Tugboats aren't the only option--- you could use on-shore rope wrangling and pulling, you could use sails, you could use focused orbital mirrors to melt ice on one side as a propulsive force... and so on.
  - bootload 10y ago
    This idea of pushing, pulling icebergs was investigated by ppl much smarter than me (Glaciology/Maths dept. Uni Melb) to see if it was at least feasible. The idea has some merit, the physics (moments of inertia) get in the way. Make for an interesting experiment to prove how.

msd81257 10y ago

Surprised no one's mentioned Nebia: https://nebia.com https://nebia.com Super cool startup working on minimising water usage through increasing the surface area/volume ratio of water droplets while taking a shower.

jayjay71 10y ago
Nebia is already funded by Y Combinator (S15).

Entangled 10y ago

Whatever the solutions, I'd like to see distributed, decentralized and individual water generation/purification systems, specially using solar.

marknutter 10y ago

I thought the whole point of YCombinator was to find startups run by people who are willing to listen to the market, "pivoting" to what might be a different problem in a different market.

niftich 10y ago

What is the current state-of-the-art for portable, personal water purification methods and devices, like the sort you could use to treat a bottle's worth of water? Devices like the LifeStraw [1], the LifeSaver bottle [2], the WaterIsLife straw [3], and the SteriPEN [4], are nice, but they're pricey. Any ways of reducing the cost? [1] http://lifestraw.com/ http://lifestraw.com/ [2] http://www.iconlifesaver.eu/ http://www.iconlifesaver.eu/ [3] http://waterislife.com/clean-water/the-straw http://waterislife.com/clean-water/the-straw [4] https://www.steripen.com/ https://www.steripen.com/

nether 10y ago

Is YC spreading this announcement anywhere else? Seems like Engineers Without Borders might be a good audience (which is mostly civil/environmental/mechanical engineers IME).

mmmBacon 10y ago

Michael Burry of The Big Short fame is investing in water. Pretty interesting article about investing in water. http://vintagevalueinvesting.com/how-to-invest-in-water-like-michael-burry-from-the-big-short/ http://vintagevalueinvesting.com/how-to-invest-in-water-like...

torpfactory 10y ago

Here's an idea: Build out massive solar and wind power capacity and create electricity for the grid. Use specially designed desalination plants which operate well at low utilization and significant swings in production to smooth out the peaks in the solar / wind production curves. Excess power is converted into clean water. Water seems like a reasonably good place to "store" the value of the energy you just created. Furthermore, what is the value of having a somewhat more predictable power supply from solar and wind resources?

digitalengineer 10y ago

Great timing :-) We've got a lot of experience with water I n the Netherlands (that little country that was partially build out of the ocean and that's several meters below sea level. Y-combinator should become a member of Water Alliance: "The Water Alliance focuses on innovative and sustainable water technology that can be used worldwide". Startups around water technology, a university and global businesses like Philips and more. See: http://wateralliance.nl/en/about-us/ http://wateralliance.nl/en/about-us/

PerfectElement 10y ago

Aren't companies like Hampton Creek, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods indirectly working on this? I'd love to see other types of innovation but it seems to me that the lowest hanging fruit is to decrease the demand for animal based foods.

delegate 10y ago

> We’re optimistic we will beat climate change. "Beat" climate change ? I think you people totally misunderstand the problem then. The reason it's happening in the first place is very simple and we all know it: mindless, senseless, useless consumption of everything. Armies of methodically brainwashed "consumers" unleashed upon the limited world around them - under the war drums of advertising and marketing. Water tech will help, but it will not fix climate change... You can't "beat" climate change without addressing the elephant in the room. Now that's a truly "hard" problem.

Kiro 10y ago
You make it sound like consumption is only a bad thing.

SeoxyS 10y ago

Isn't the obvious solution here cheap/clean electricity = cheap/clean purified water? Seems higher leverage to focus on the energy part of the equation.

spangry 10y ago

I don't know if this is useful, but if you're looking to acquire more background knowledge from someone with 'expertise' on water scarcity, perhaps you might consider contacting the Singaporean government? Water scarcity became a major policy issue for them around the time they were kicked out of the Malaysian Federation in the 60s, probably because their main water supply is located in Malaysia... They currently have the capacity to satisfy 30% of their water demand using 'reclaimed water' (i.e. recycled) and 10% using desalinated. Although I don't think they actually need to fully utilise these capacities as 50-75 per cent of their water needs are met by man-made rainfall catchments [0]. I realise how strange it is to say 'just go have a chat with the Singaporean government', but I suspect they'd be happy share their expertise. My sketchy understanding is that Singapore has found that 'reclaimed' (i.e. recycled) water is far more cost-effective (and cleaner) compared to desalinated water. And despite being a semi-benevolent autocracy, the Singaporean government has had to work pretty hard to convince their population that there's nothing wrong with drinking recycled water (i.e. water that previously had poop in it). Learning how they overcame this issue could be valuable... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Singapore#Water_sources_and_integrated_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...

andrewl 10y ago

This letter to the editor from the January 3, 2017 New York Times argues for public funding of water systems: Failures of the Private Water Industry http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opinion/failures-of-the-private-water-industry.html http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opinion/failures-of-the-pr... I wonder if there's any public funding of water system research?

ALee 10y ago

I've thought a lot about this and the key is not just technology, but the ability to quickly automate the markets for the sale of water. In many cases, water is plentiful, it's just very hard to get it somewhere. Infrastructure combined with a way to automate water rights exchanges is a really important part of this equation.

Pica_soO 10y ago

If the climate becomes unreliable you need large scale underground water storage of rain to compensate this. Basically you need cheap, replaceable solar-pumps (that one is allready doable). And you need cheap, near surface volumes dug out and sealed. Actually all you need for that is - a water pump and a glorified fridge. You drill a initial hole- and now you pump water in and freeze it. Water expands, you thaw it and repeat. Basically a giant intentional pothole. Now, anyone here into tunnel engineering? How to cheaply seal the resulting artificial cavern?

dang 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20170801000000*/https://blog.ycombinator.com/request-for-startups-water/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170801000000*/https://blog.yco...